Astronomers have observed the biggest explosion ever seen in the universe.
The ‘record-breaking, gargantuan eruption’ is believed to have been caused by a black hole in a distant galaxy cluster hundreds of millions of light-years away.
Maxim Markevitch of Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center said the explosion was ‘an eruption of unprecedented size’.
‘In some ways, this blast is similar to how the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 ripped off the top of the mountain,’ said Simona Giacintucci of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington and lead author of a study.
‘A key difference is that you could fit fifteen Milky Way galaxies in a row into the crater this eruption punched into the cluster’s hot gas.’
The ‘unrivalled outburst’ was detected in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster, which is about 390 million light-years from Earth.
Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in the Universe that are held together by gravity. They contain thousands of individual galaxies as well as dark matter and hot gas.
A large galaxy with a supermassive black hole sits at the centre of the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster. It’s thought this hole is to blame for the epic explosion.
Black holes are famed for eating up anything unlucky enough to be nearby.
But the beasts can also expel huge amounts of energy when matter falling into their greedy maw is redirected as jets which blast out into space around them.
It’s likely the supermassive monster caused the explosion, which created a hole in the surrounding gas requiring about five times more energy than the previous record-holder, which is called MS 0735+74.
‘More data will be needed to answer the many remaining questions this object poses,’ said Melanie Johnston-Hollitt of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy in Australia.
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